Today marked the beginning of perhaps a long journey into the unknown – learning something entirely new – or new to me at least.
I’ve been busy reading documentation all day – and writing pages of notes about an endless list of programming frameworks and libraries that I’ve never heard of or seen before. The climb ahead is looking pretty vertical at the moment – I’m sure it will get easier.
Before I knew it, the day had gone – the evening has almost gone too. It’s funny how that happens.
Quite how I’m still awake is anyone’s guess.
I knew my middle daughter was working until midnight in the pub last night, so stayed up to make sure she got home in one piece. Midnight didn’t seem like such a big deal – until it became 1:30am. As she approached the front door in the darkness, it magically swung open in front of her and I stepped from the shadows, smiling.
I whispered “hello”, and she silently waved her key at me.
We crossed paths minutes later on the upstairs landing – with whispers of “goodnight” before collapsing into bed.
There’s a temptation this evening to fall down the internet rabbit hole in search of knowledge – to make tomorrow’s continued climb up the vertical cliff a little easier.
I’m resisting – so far.
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I asked an artificially intelligent machine learning algorithm to draw a concept art character of a 50 year old software developer sitting in a room full of old computer hardware (so essentially, a pretend alter-ego of myself).
The result was interesting. I always find it interesting to see what biases artificial intelligence has – how it portrays nationalities, ages, and common stereotypes. It’s interesting to see how it portrays people with different percieved or presumed backgrounds.
I asked one of the famous AI platforms to pretend to be this non existent person, and write a blog post – and to base his personality on recent posts in this blog. I half expected guard-rails to kick in and refuse my request.
Imagine my surprise when the machinery of the internet turned it’s cogs, and said “fine… here you go:”
Here’s an excerpt of what it came up with:
I was re-reading an old journal entry this morning – something I scribbled down months ago in a moment of fleeting clarity. It struck me how many of those half-formed ideas, those nascent understandings of myself and the world, still echo within me. They haven’t quite solidified into conclusions, haven’t found their neat little boxes. Instead, they drift like wisps of smoke, occasionally coalescing into a momentary shape before dissolving back into the ether.
There’s a certain comfort in this state, I think. A permission to not have all the answers, to reside in the ambiguity of the in-between. Life, after all, rarely presents itself in neatly packaged solutions. More often, it’s a series of unfolding moments, each carrying its own subtle nuances and unresolved threads.
I find myself drawn to the spaces where clarity blurs, where the edges of understanding soften. It’s in these liminal zones that the most interesting discoveries often lie – the unexpected connections, the subtle shifts in perspective that reshape the way we see ourselves and the world around us.
Am I really that nebulous?
I will admit to being endlessly fascinated with computers – and with what their programming comes up with when not given enough information to form what we might deem sensible or plausible answers.
I can’t help being reminded of Robin William’s speech in Good Will Hunting – about Will’s invented persona – used to shield from the trauma he had experienced:
So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written…Michelangelo?
You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right?
But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.
The monologue famously contemplates love, loss, and more – but this small excerpt (for me) says everything about the state of AI at the moment. It’s a parlour trick. Yes, it’s very good at looking things up – it’s read everything, after all – but all that makes it into is an insufferable know-it-all.
If it asks after you, it’s not doing so out of empathy – it’s doing so because it’s been told to.
There’s a wonderful moment in the movie “AI” where William Hurt is demonstrating the limits of AI to a classroom full of students – he asks a female robot what love is:
Professor Hobby: Tell me. What is love?
Sheila: Love is first widening my eyes a little bit and quickening my breathing a little and warming my skin and touching with my…
Professor Hobby: And so on. Exactly so. Thank you, Sheila.
I can’t help wondering how long it will take for artificial intelligence to begin to understand the more complex facets of human interaction – empathy, happiness, sadness, longing, kindness, sorrow, humor.
I suspect it will happen faster than we imagine. -
While sitting here in the dark of the junk room, bathed in the light of lamps that stand on either end of the desk, a server farm somewhere is having a quiet heart attack – having received every blog post I’ve written since 2003. The posts are slowly appearing – back-filling the past towards the present, re-constructing the “story of me”.
You’re probably wondering why. So am I.
The entire escapade was triggered by a conversation with a friend earlier – who mentioned they had been reading my blog recently. All of the over-think cogs started turning at once following the conversation, and I began wondering how I might bring “the motherlode” to life on the internet once more.
I’m nothing if not organised.
Hidden away on the internet, I’ve always had a backup of my blog in various states of disrepair, hidden away in a source code repository, stored as “markdown” (a plain text format used in the publishing industry).
After a few minutes of head scratching, and some re-purposing of old python scripts, I turned the collection of plain text files into WordPress import files. Substack understands wordpress import files.
And so – as I write this, the Substack server farm is churning through somewhere in the region of six thousand posts – expanding the stories told here to include twenty years worth of traveling with work, running, IVF, adoption, parenting, cats, dogs, and everything in-between.
I’m not sure anybody would be mad enough to go back and read the whole damn thing, but you never know. Some of the older posts are bit broken in places – the result of one too many migrations between platforms in the early days of the social internet – but the words are all there. Or at least, mostly there.
Anyway.
I’ll shut up. It’s been a bit of a day. The project I’ve been working on involves a lot of mathematics – lots of angles, distances, and coordinates. Triganometry. I’m not quite sure how I remembered it, but I did – and the math miraculously worked – conjuring business graphics onto the screen more-or-less where I planned it to. I joked with a friend that I almost did a happy dance through the house.
We won’t talk about the next project coming down the pipe – which will apparently keep me busy until next year and beyond. Fun times.
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Do you ever get to the end of the weekend, and wonder not only where it went, but also what you spent it doing? Last night I sat in bed, wondering exactly that – trying to piece the weekend back together in my head.
It was my other half’s birthday on Saturday.
After unwrapping presents in the morning we wandered into town for lunch – with the intention of perhaps wandering along the high-street to visit some of the pubs we have never been in. Somehow that changed into eating as fast as possible, having one drink, going home, getting in the car, trying to get a lane at the bowling alley in a nearby town (unsuccessfully), going clothes shopping instead, going food shopping, and then having a birthday dinner at home – oh, and causing more washing up than I’ve seen in years.
Yesterday was a little bit more relaxed. My in-laws visited for a meal at the pub. This of course necessitated cleaning the house as one might for a royal visit ahead of their arrival (read: hide anything and everything in cupboards and rooms just out of sight).
My brother-in-law gave me a belated Amazon voucher for my birthday earlier in the month – so I scrolled endlessly through books yesterday evening – wondering what I might acquire to read. I know – I have a pile of unread books higher than the Eiffel Tower, but that doesn’t make the possibility of buying another book any less exciting.
I’ve still not spent all of the voucher. How do you even choose books with money you didn’t expect to have?
A good thing that came out of the shopping trip on Saturday was the opportunity to visit the music store – the one that sells vinyl albums. After much rummaging through boxes of records I found a Bjork album that I played to destruction perhaps 30 years ago. I’m still almost exclusively buying female recording artists, just to bring balance to the rag-tag collection of vinyl albums we have (my other half’s collection is almost entirely male). I almost picked up “Tapestry” by Carole King too.
I’m thinking Fiona Apple might join the record collection soon. I had never heard of her until a good friend introduced me a few months ago. I’ve had her playing in the background on Spotify from time to time ever since.
Anyway.
Time to stop writing words, and start writing code. Again.
Let’s see what the week throws at us. -
I’ve been meaning to write something all week – somehow each time I sit down at the computer, something happens to either distract or divert me.
Never mind. I’m here now. Better late than never.
I’m slowly getting better after the lung infection that floored me for several weeks. The cough has pretty much gone – I’m just tired now. It doesn’t help that I’m still trying to burn the candle at both ends – working all day, doing chores whenever I stop for a “break”, and then working all evening on content creation for YouTube.
I went out for dinner with coworkers last week, and the subject somehow turned around to the YouTube channel – with several of them asking how it was going. The looks on some of their faces when I told them how many subscribers I have was amusing.
I often get the feeling – whenever I’m asked about the YouTube escapade – that there’s an element of jealousy in the air. I guess there will always be people that want the end result, but don’t want the work it takes to get there. I can’t help feeling it’s related to a trend – perhaps most commonly among millennials – to try and invent businesses that scrape from other businesses in some way – it really annoys me.
I’m always a bit defensive about the YouTube channel – I don’t know why. I’ve never thought of content creation as a “proper job” that can be aspired to. I suppose a lot of that is seated in my own prejudices. I’ll never understand the legions of content creators cranking out “reactions”, “pranks”, and “virtue flexing” videos – polluting the internet with increasingly deplorable detritus.
By far the worst trend I have seen in recent months is a trope where people “find” a kitten or a puppy in the wild in dreadful condition, and dramatise the rescue story. The animals have obviously been either drugged or abused before being planted to be found for the scripted “discovery and rescue”. It’s monstrous.
Don’t even get me started about the continual need some people seem to have to be seen as the “funniest person in the room” – passing comment on anything and everything with as much sarcasm as possible, and yet never creating anything original or substantive of their own.
Deep breaths.
Anyway.
It’s the weekend!
It’s my other half’s birthday tomorrow, so I imagine we’ll be wandering into town for a drink or three, and something to eat. We live in a very affluent area, so the high-street is filled with wonderful pubs, restaurants and cafés that I’ve rarely if ever visited. Maybe a drink in each place – purely in the interests of research? A birthday is a good excuse, isn’t it.
Perhaps a long lunch and wander around town?
Her presents are wrapped, and tucked under the desk behind me. She knows what she’s getting – she chose – I paid. It’s easier that way.
The in-laws are arriving on Sunday to go out for a meal too. Out-out two days in a row!
I suppose I should go clear the table ready for dinner. I can almost guarantee my daughters will have filled the table with sports bags, coats, and junk mail – because of course we don’t have anywhere else that any of that stuff could go.
I swear – it wouldn’t take much in the way of detective skills to reconstruct any of my daughter’s days – all you need to do is walk through the house, picking things up – the story writes itself.
(an hour passes while we eat dinner together)
I was just thinking (always dangerous, I know) – that if the kids take anything away from their early years, I hope it’s the whole thing about sitting at the table together at dinner time – sharing the story of our day with each other.
My eldest daughter arrived home just as we were finishing dinner – her journey home is sometimes long. She got to choose a pizza from dominos, and strangely didn’t feel bad about that at all. I don’t think I would have either, to be honest.
I might have added myself some ice cream to the Dominos order.
p.s. I’ve finally turned on the various monetary options in the blog – meaning that if I ever choose to, I can put posts behind a pay-wall. I’m not quite sure what I might hide behind a pay-wall, but you never know. -
I was going to go to bed at a fairly normal time last night, but then fell down an internet rabbit hole of my own making. Before I knew it, it was 2am, and the first Formula One race of the new season would be broadcast at 4am – from Melbourne, Australia. I wondered about grabbing a couple of hours sleep on the sofa but somehow that didn’t happen.
After watching the race I eventually fell into bed at 6am – waking up three hours later. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to get through the rest of today. I don’t seem to be able to get away with surviving on such little sleep any more.
Anyway.
It’s been a quiet weekend so far.
In an outrageous fit of extravagance on Friday I spent a little of the hard earned YouTube money on a new gadget for myself – an “Amazon Fire Max 11” (or at least, some combination of those words, but perhaps in a different order). I also got a pen for it – which seems to employ some sort of sorcery to affect writing on the screen. It’s tremendously clever, and I understand none of it.
A veritable treasure-trove of procrastination awaits.
The hope is that this little machine can go pretty much everywhere with me, and – who knows – I might even write something of consequence using it (even my eyes are rolling at that one – we all know I’ll just tinker with it endlessly, rather than use it for anything even vaguely constructive).
In other news, our eldest appears to have broken up with her boyfriend. I met her in the kitchen in the early hours, after she had been to the pub with her sister. She had her hair cut yesterday, and seemed to have pulled herself up by her boot-straps. Suffice to say I’m ridiculously proud of her for wanting to get on with her life. I imagine there are going to be more bumps in the road ahead, but facing the world down with a new haircut seems like a pretty bloody good first step to me.
After murmured conversations about dropping out of college last week, our youngest daughter has met with her tutors and agreed to continue. We’re crossing our fingers and toes that she will carry on. Conversations were had about next year – about an apprenticeship or internship at a company connected to her college. Like I said – fingers and toes firmly crossed – if she carries on I’ll be super proud of her too.
Our middle daughter has been knocking it out of the park recently. After working two jobs for the last month, she resigned from the local café and is moving towards working full-time at the huge pub in town – table running, serving behind the bar, and making food in the kitchen too (she showed us her chef uniform this week). Alongside that she’s still finding time to visit the gym, and the weight is falling off her. So yes – super proud of her too.
Finally, I’m actually (fingers crossed) starting to feel better too. I’m still not 100%, but I can at least potter around the house doing things without coughing my lungs up. There have been murmurs at home about calling friends to have a belated birthday drink in town at some point – perhaps to coincide with my other half’s birthday next week. We’ll see.
Right. I better go. There’s a cup of coffee and a hot-cross-bun with my name on it in the kitchen. -
We just got back from the cinema – after finally seeing the latest (and perhaps final?) Bridget Jones movie. I had heard mixed things about it – some friends loved it, some hated it, some were indifferent.
I loved it, and I can’t really put my finger on why.
Yes, it’s quite predictable, and yes, the laughs are sometimes forced, but oh my word did it ever rip me a new one emotionally.
Maybe I’m a poor judge. Perhaps that’s it though – I try not to judge movies – I’m there for the escape – to see the world through somebody else’s eyes – to walk in their shoes for a little while – to laugh and cry with them.
I’m not going to say anything about the story because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. I’ve had enough of the “Paul from Midnight in Paris” idiots mansplaining the synopsis of books and movies to whoever might listen – dictating what should be felt, what should cause amusement, and what should be considered watchable (or not).
For me the cinema has always been about being there in the moment – or rather being taken somewhere other than here. For me, that’s the magic.
Tonight, during a quiet moment in the movie I heard several people around us quietly giggling, and sniffing. I wiped a tear from my own cheek – and smiled.
If it is the last movie, I’m going to miss Bridget. -
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room, bathed in the light from the computer screen, surrounded by silence throughout the house. Everybody else is already in bed, and the clocks are ticking inexorably towards Monday. if I sit still and keep my mouth shut, the infection that has plagued me for the last several weeks seems to leave me alone.
It wouldn’t take much of a clairvoyant to predict a request for more antibiotics from the doctor tomorrow. I imagine that might require a second visit to the nurse, and a second listen to my innards as I attempt to inflate my lungs.
I’m fed up with feeling terrible now. My birthday pretty much got cancelled, and apart from a trip to the garden centre for a cup of tea and a piece of cake earlier, I’ve not set foot outside the house for a week.
It’s all my fault, isn’t it. I wrote about wanting to start running again. That’s all it took for the universe to turns it’s attention on me, and whisper “let’s get him”.
While cooped up in the house over the last week I’ve watched a lot of television, and scrolled a lot of the internet. Years ago we used to joke about reading the entire internet – that will never happen any more because a legion of robots are writing an infinite number of next pages, just before we reach them.
After attempting to scroll through the dross at Facebook a couple of days ago I almost posted an incendiary post about the utter cesspool it has become. While scrolling I blocked perhaps three quarters of the posts I saw – “suggested” posts, written by robots. While reporting and blocking the umpteenth fake-news story I stumbled upon, it suddenly occurred to me that the reporting mechanism isn’t really reporting anything – it’s using humans as engines to help clean the swamp.
I closed the browser tab, and sat back in my chair – shaking my head.
It won’t be long until AI avatars are reading and responding to content, as well as creating it. It will be portrayed as “incentivising conversation”, or some such codswallop. Meta have had their fingers burned with similar experiments in the past.
Anyway.
Roxy Music just started singing “More Than This” on Spotify. Well played, universe. Well played. -
It’s late on Friday night, and I’m wondering if my body has started to turn a corner. After a week taking steroids and antibiotics, I took the last of them this morning. The cough is nowhere near as bad as it has been, and I have been able to help out a little more with chores.
Of course it would have helped if a certain cat hadn’t sent us all into panic stations this morning.
While sitting on the edge of the bed, thinking through the need to eat something before ramming another handful of tablets into my mouth, my other half burst into the bedroom to tell me there was something wrong with the cat.
I won’t go into too much detail – beyond the discovery of quiet a smelly mess in the upstairs bathroom, and sick under the dining table.
It’s probably worth noting that this “many storied” cat of ours – “George” – has probably used up more than his quota of lives already. He was run over when he was young, and had his back-end and legs re-built – then a couple of years later he got a blockage that caused him to have all of his bits and pieces removed – turning him into neither a boy or girl. While going through that surgery a mistake was made that nearly killed him – requiring emergency surgery that wiped out his insurance, and all of our savings.
I can still remember having the conversation with the children – should we have money in the bank, or should we save his life. Given his continued existence, you can guess what happened.
We didn’t go on holiday that year.
Anyway.
I jumped in the shower and then had a shave (I looked like a caveman) while my other half searched for the local vet. She then left for work, called our youngest daughter (who started out towards home immediately), and I got us an appointment at the vet. I then climbed into the attic in search of the “pet carrier” (read: cage).
Half an hour later I arrived at the vet carrying a rather grumpy ginger cat – yowling to anybody that would listen. After booking George in and confirming his name, address, age (15!) and bank details, we sat and waited.
I love vet waiting rooms – you never know what you’re going to see.
We saw a gangly boxer dog that (as my famous step-grandfather once told me) “didn’t know if it was having a shit or a haircut”. It noticed George after a few seconds and snuck towards the cage for a sniff. George moved with the speed of Zorro and clattered against the cage bars – causing the Boxer to reverse across the floor at speed and cower behind it’s owner’s legs – physically shaking – not taking it’s eyes off George the entire time. If not for the cage bars, I’m pretty sure George would have made a bit of a mess of the dog’s face before it knew much about it.
A few minutes later we were beckoned in, whereupon our yowling, poorly, frightened cat put on the biggest charm offensive you’ve ever seen. The vet found NOTHING wrong with him. She weighed him, stuck a thermometer up his bum, injected him with something, and turned him this way and that – he put up with all of it, and sat on her table like some sort of stoic gollum – taking great interest in the hedgerow outside her window.
He didn’t once flinch, complain, or react to anything she did. Even she was impressed. She was more impressed that a 15 year old cat was in such good condition. She obviously doesn’t realise how many staff he has, and quite what a charmed life he lives.
So.
We paid the requisite amount of money for the visit, and took him home again – then rang everybody to lower “panic stations” a bit before getting on with work, chores, and whatever else the day might throw at us.
The good thing?
I really do think I’m getting better (at last!). I just got off a livestream on YouTube – the first in perhaps 10 days – and made it through a couple of hours talking without coughing much at all.
Fingers crossed. -
On the way home from visiting my parents last night, after being sick for the better part of two weeks, my other half pretty much ordered to me to book a doctors appointment. The confirmation came through within a couple of hours (while still en-route – it’s a long way), for an appointment the same afternoon. Unheard of.
Immediately after getting home I walked to the doctors, booked myself in, and sat waiting for my name to come up on the screens. I think it’s perhaps the third time in twenty years that I’ve ever had to visit the doctor for me.
After sitting in the waiting room, trying to avoid the gaze of a blonde woman sitting opposite (I’m still not sure if she liked me, or was amazed at how ill I looked), my name came up on the screen.
I saw a nurse – not a doctor – who asked all manner of questions before requesting I pull my shirt up. While she prodded around with a stethoscope, I tried to breathe deeply, and coughed spectacularly.
“You have an infection in your left lung. I’m going to prescribe a course of antibiotics, and steroids – starting immediately you get home. I want you to take 8 steroid tablets, and 2 antibiotics immediately, then follow the instructions on the labels”.
I’m going to rattle by the end of the week.
The kids giggled while watching me down the first round of tablets. They’re all pretty hopeless at tablets – I crammed them in my mouth like M&Ms and washed them down with a swig of water.
You know the worst thing?
The kids had prepared an enormous birthday dinner for me – the table was crammed with all manner of “party food” – cold cuts of meat, bread, cheese, dips, vegetables, pickles – you name it – it was on the table.
I didn’t really feel like eating any of it.
But I did.
I felt so sorry for them.
After dinner I quietly took myself to bed, and slept straight through until morning. The nurse had warned me that the steroids might affect my sleep – she wasn’t wrong. I woke at 4am, 5am, 6am, and finally 7am before scraping myself out of bed.
Apparently the steroids will make me hungry too. I don’t think I’ve ever been on steroids before.
So. Here we are. I’ve been sitting quietly in the study all day, getting on with work, and making starring appearances on calls from time to time – where everybody commented on how rough I looked and sounded. Wonderful.
The good thing? If I sit here and don’t talk, I’m not too bad.
I guess I just need to keep taking the tablets, and see what happens.
p.s. I got my age wrong on the previous post – I’m 52, not 53. Apparently I’m now old enough that I have to work it out. -
Greetings from deepest, darkest Cornwall, where I’m visiting my parents for the weekend.
After arriving late on Friday evening, we wandered into Looe on Saturday – known from a recently famous television show as “Shipton Abbot”. We wandered around the town, half-expecting to walk into the characters from the TV show.
Today – Sunday – we wandered to a Victorian country house a little way away and went for a walk around the house and gardens. They are looked after by the National Trust. We chatted with one of the volunteers on site for some time – reminiscing about visiting with our children years ago.
It’s been a good couple of days away. A good break.
I will admit that ever since my parents retired down here I’ve always preferred to visit when none of the holiday makers are here. I wonder how the local communities get through the winter – it’s so quiet. I guess if you’re used to a seasonal way of life you budget, and hope to make enough during the season to see you through. It’s a very different way of life.
Tonight we’re holed up at my parents – catching up on stories, and half-watching television. “Call the Midwife” is on, and silence has descended upon the house. It’s funny how some television shows seem to cross generations.
My parents bought me a mug for my birthday – saying “I’m kind of a big deal on Youtube”. I can’t help thinking of Fin in Star Wars saying as much to Han Solo about him bing “kind of a big deal in the resistence”.
I’m self deprecating to a fault, and the worst self-marketer I know.
I hadn’t really thought about my birthday until today. Tomorrow I’ll be 52. I’m not sure if I feel it or not – or quite how I should feel. I do know that I need to start running again – or walking at least.
Leaving the house would be a start.
It’s too easy to become consumed in work, making money, and to forget about friends – and yet I also know that so many of us are struggling – running flat out to keep our head above water – worrying about the future – worrying about the present.
It’s hard.
Isn’t it interesting how something as simple as an upcoming birthday can cause you to reflect – to refactor. Perhaps this year I will make no grand promises to others — I’ll just promise to myself to keep in touch with those I care most about – my friends – both near and far. How long does it really take to say “hello”, “how are you”, or “how is your day?”.
I know in the past I’ve often become tired of being the one to reach out. The reality is reaching out is easy. Reading the quite wonderful book about the boy, the fox, the horse and the mole reminded me that asking for help is quite often far more difficult than accepting it. If I might give a friend the opportunity to share a burden, or lighten a load, I’ll happily take the chance. -
After a week and a half struggling with a cough and cold, I’m finally starting to feel better this morning – or at least if I sit quietly, I don’t cough my lungs up. My head still slowly fills with snot though. Too much? Sorry.
It always interests me that when you’re properly sick, entire days seem to vanish. Apparently it’s been nearly a week since I wrote anything of consequence in the blog, and yet I can’t really remember much about the past several days. The majority of the time has vanished into a haze created by ibuprofen and paracetamol.
I hate taking tablets, and it’s not without good reason – just sitting here now – dosed up – I don’t have a headache, but I can feel the pressure in my head. The “dead of night” sound of blood rushing through my ears is a pretty consistent roar at the moment.
ANYWAY!
We’re getting ready to travel to the coast for a few days – made somewhat problematic by my other half forgetting to charge the car all week (we have an electric car). I foresee an enforced stop at a services for an hour along the way to leave it on a fast-charger for a while.
We’re travelling light. Warm clothes, walking boots, and not much else. In related news, I just discovered that all of the washbags I have used for the last several years have been thrown away – so that’s helpful.
I should go grab some lunch before we leave. We have a long journey ahead.
Hopefully the next few days will afford the chance to sit down and write something a little more consequential for the blog. It’s about time.
